Allocution, Sunday, May 22
VI Sunday of Easter of Resurrection
(SINGING)
Today, the sixth Sunday of Easter and the feast of Saint Rita, advocate of the impossible, we hear in the Catholic churches the gospel of Saint John, chapter 14, verses 23 to 29.
(GOSPEL)
We already know the wonder of loving and love corresponds to our nature since we have been created in the image and likeness of God, who is love, from the very womb, from the first day of our conception.
Then the first years of our lives were full of family love.
Our family taught us to love with examples, teachings, corrections and by loving we have felt immense joy and satisfaction and although at times loving has involved sacrifices, tears and worries, love has emerged victorious and triumphant, and by living all the teaching received from love, we have had great peace.
Peace in the midst of the illness of those we love.
Peace in the pain of death.
Peace in forgiveness and asking for forgiveness.
Peace in sweat and sacrifice to love.
Peace when everything goes wrong.
Peace even if they declare war on me.
Peace when projects and dreams do not happen.
Peace at all times because it is good to trust in the Lord.
Peace always because God loves us and never leaves us abandoned and without Him our lives have no meaning.
If we love, we live in peace, we work in peace, we eat in peace, we suffer in peace, we die in peace.
(SINGING)
If the Son of God himself was sent into this world to be served, not to be served, then wouldn’t your special and supernatural vocation throughout your life also consist of being useful for something, of serving your fellow man? But in order to produce, yield, it is first necessary to sow. So God has called you to this world to sow love where there is no love, to be able to harvest love, understanding, harmony, sympathy and enthusiasm, that can lift fallen spirits and know how to channel their short existence towards the sublime mission for which they were destined. . Sow your smile in the midst of sadness and boredom to dispel the dark clouds of pessimism; sow friendship and healthy and sincere joy that brightens the atmosphere around you and lifts your spirits towards entrepreneurial optimism; sow energy and Christian strength to combat all adversity and temptations and be able to overcome in that constant battle that is the price of that beautiful little heaven for which we fight; sow firmness and hope in the midst of despair and discouragement when everything seems to be lost; give encouragement, feel like starting over a hundred times if necessary. If you sow you will reap.
(SINGING)
The Holy Spirit, who the Father will send in my name, will be the one who teaches you everything and reminds you of everything I have told you. We have heard this in today’s Gospel. The Holy Spirit is a generous spring, an overflowing fountain that always gives, and that is why he always invites us to give generously. Sometimes we do not realize the truth of what Saint Francis of Assisi said: “It is by giving that one receives.” If we give generously, instead of depriving ourselves, we become richer; Instead of emptying ourselves, we fill ourselves with a superior wealth that cannot be seen with the eyes of the body, the word of God says it clearly: “There is more happiness in giving than in receiving.” Let us believe in that teaching of the Bible. This happens when we learn to give with a generous and sincere heart, truly detached from what we give. The heart is filled with strength when one gives, not reluctantly or forced, because God loves those who give with joy. It is very beautiful to become an instrument of the Holy Spirit, so that through us he can give and give and give. Give without expecting a reward, give without demanding thanks or recognition, give for the sole pleasure of giving, give without measure and without sadness, and so that this becomes increasingly a wonderful reality in our lives, we pray to the Holy Spirit with an ancient prayer that the Church always prays especially in these days close to the feast of Pentecost.
(SONG: COME DIVINE SPIRIT)
Giving your seat to an older person on the bus is a sign of courtesy, but doing so with a smile and helping them sit down is much more, it is an act of love.
There are many ways to show love. It is enough to be attentive to what is happening around us.
One day, in a well-known ice cream parlor, there was a long line of people waiting to enjoy delicious ice cream. A girl, who was alone and holding the money tightly in one hand, also got in line.
When his turn came, and before he could hand over the money, the manager told him to read the sign on the wall, which said: “No entry barefoot.”
The girl looked at her feet, and started crying because she didn’t have shoes.
He was already leaving the line when a strong hand touched his shoulder. He was a big man. To the girl he seemed like a giant. He went with her to a bench, sat down, took off his shoes… which were size 45! And he put them on the girl.
-Go buy your ice cream, I’ll stay here waiting for you.
The girl, dragging her feet, very slowly, reached the checkout, bought her ice cream and returned happily to the man.
When she returned the shoes, the girl could see that this man with enormous feet also had very big hands, but, above all, he had a big heart!
Loving your neighbor is making them happy, even if it is with something small.
It is having our eyes open to discover the sadness that is in other eyes, and approaching them, smiling.
It means having your ears open to listen to the cries, even from those who cannot express themselves.
Loving your neighbor is having the ability to look beyond yourself.
Last week, Pope Francis told us about the young Judit who remained brave despite her old age.
“Judit soon became a widow and had no children, but as an old woman she was able to live a time of plenitude and serenity, with the awareness of having lived to the full the mission that the Lord had entrusted to her. For her, it is time to leave the good inheritance of wisdom, tenderness, and gifts for the family and the community. An inheritance of good and not just goods. When we think about inheritance, sometimes we think about assets and not about the good that has been done in old age and that has been sown. That good that is the best inheritance that we can leave. Precisely in her old age, Judit ‘granted freedom to her favorite servant’. This is a sign of an attentive and human look towards those who have been close to her. This servant had accompanied her at the time of that adventure to defeat the dictator and cut his throat. As elderly people, we lose sight a little, but our inner gaze becomes more penetrating: we see with the heart. One becomes able to see things that previously eluded one. The elderly know how to look and how to see… It is like this: the Lord does not entrust his talents only to the young and the strong; It has something for everyone, tailored to each person, including the elderly. The life of our communities must know how to enjoy the talents and charisma of so many elderly people, who by the record are already retired, but who are a wealth that must be valued. This requires, on the part of the elderly themselves, creative attention, new attention, generous availability. The previous skills of active life lose their part of constraint and become resources of donation: teaching, advising, building, healing, listening… Preferably in favor of the most disadvantaged, who cannot afford any learning and who are abandoned to their loneliness. .
Judit freed her servant and showered everyone with attention. As a young man he had earned the esteem of the community with his bravery. As an old woman, she deserved it for the tenderness with which she enriched freedom and affection. Judit is not a retiree who lives her emptiness melancholy: she is a passionate old woman who fills the time that God gives her with gifts. I ask you: take, one of these days, the Bible and take the book of Judith: it is small, it is easy to read, it is ten pages, no more. Read this story of a brave woman who ends up like this, with tenderness, with generosity, a woman worthy of it. And that’s how I would like our grandmothers to be. All of them like this: brave, wise and who leave us the inheritance not of money, but the inheritance of wisdom, sown in their grandchildren.”
We thank God for all the communities that have already held their Parish Assemblies of the Synodal Path: El Loreto, Santa Cruz del Norte, Santa Lucía, El Rosario, Sagrado Corazón de la Víbora, Santa Clara de Asís, Güines, Melena, Cristo Rey , Saint Catherine, Saint Cross of Jerusalem, Lord of the Holy Calvary, the chapel of Ciudad Jardín, the parish of Saint Rita, Saint Mary of the Rosary, Saint Úrsula and we also give thanks for those who are holding these assemblies today: Christ the Nazarene, Saint Francis Javier, Saint John the Baptist.
(SINGING)
Saint Rita of Casia, patient wife, who led her husband towards the Faith; suffering mother, who saved her children from revenge; praying widow, who achieved miracles from God; nun crucified with Christ and now next to the Risen Lord, ask God the Father for the best for me, my family, my Church, my people… Amen.
(GOSPEL)
And after living in love, peace and experiencing what the Holy Spirit tells us, the House of Heaven awaits us, where we will be completely happy singing to God eternally with the saints and with our deceased. The Book of Revelation gives us a picture of what the wonder of heaven will be like. The Book of Revelation tells us that there are twelve doors to enter the House of Heaven, let us all enter through them living what the Lord himself asks of us in his Gospel, in the Catechism, in that interior motion that we have towards love.
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. , do not let us fall into temptation and deliver us from evil… Amen.
And the blessing of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, descend on us, on our families and on all the people who suffer the death of their loved ones, and this blessing, then, direct us to the House of Heaven… Amen .
(SINGING)